


The Strings That Control the System

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: House M.D., Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drift Compatibility, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:44:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric Foreman by all rights should never have gotten involved with the Jaegar Program, or Stacker Pentecost, in the first place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strings That Control the System

Eric Foreman wasn't exactly prepared for the phone call. He'd seen the footage from San Francisco, Manila, Cabo. And he knew there were all kinds of schemes to "do something" in the works; he'd seen plenty of reports and heard angry shouting from radio personalities about wasted money. Mostly he'd kept his head down and his practice open.

So the request took him by surprise. "My name is Doctor Caitlin Lightcap, Dr. Foreman. I'd like to ask you to come work with me on the Jaegar Program."

He had heard of the Jaegar Program, sort of. "I'm sorry, Dr. Lightcap, I'm not really sure what you're asking."

"I need a neurosurgeon, Dr. Foreman," she said. "We're working on a specialized neural bridge, and my experience is all on the mechanical side of the link. We had a list of candidates and you were at the top."

Eric winced. "I've got a practice of my own, Dr. Lightcap; forgive me for saying so, but--"

"Your country needs you, Dr. Foreman," Lightcap said quietly. "We need a first-class doctor who can think outside the box. The pay won't be nearly what you're making in private practice, but the difference you'll make here may save the rest of us."

He closed his eyes and measured his gullibility against his patriotism. "Send me the information, I'll think about it?"

"Thank you, Dr. Foreman," she said in relief. "I know you'll make the right decision."

* * *

He made the stupid decision and caught the plane to Pittsburg.

The neural bridge--or "Pons" as Lightcap called it--was probably the thing that got him, he had to admit. He'd worked with a variety of neural sensors and prostheses, but none that he'd really been satisfied with. If there really was a breakthrough here, he wanted to be part of it.

And she was making progress, too. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Schoenfeld, the project director, they fine-tuned the sensors for the delicate feedback loop necessary for echoing and mimicing the body's natural movement.

"This would almost be easier if we hacked off the pilot's arm," Foreman griped as they tooled the system.

"It would be easier if we had funding for pilots," Lightcap said darkly. "With arms or not."

Lightcap hadn't been kidding when she mentioned the pay. Their grant was stretched between the Pons and the robot suit the pilot would be steering. And they didn't have enough money for either. Schoenfeld had managed to put together an arm that mostly reacted like a human musculoskeletal system, but no more than an arm. And as for the brain, well...

"The human brain isn't like a computer. You can't just graft extra limbs onto it," Foreman said in the weekly staff meeting. "This neural echoing is taxing the speed of synaptic recovery. We need to find a way for the brain not to overload."

"What about the architecture in the computer side of the link?" Shoenfeld asked.

"We're working on optimizing it," Lightcap said, "But we're only getting so far without actually hooking a test pilot up to the equipment."

"I've asked the P.P.D.C. for test pilots, but--"

"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," a man said from the doorway.

Foreman had to turn in his seat before he could see who had interrupted them. Gruff voice and English accent he got right away. Uniform and military haircut and dark skin and eyes he got only after he looked. Several things he didn't get at that first meeting at all.

"Marshall Stacker Pentecost," the man introduced himself. "I'm here from the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. I was hoping you could show me your results."

Shoenfeld stood slowly, as though he were getting his balance in a high wind. "I'm Dr. Shoenfeld, the head of this project," he said. "These are my associates."

Eric watched the new guy's eyes as Shoenfeld introduced everyone. He took them all in, calmly, and when it was Eric's turn he met Eric's gaze with unperturbed calm, as though he hadn't just waltzed in and announced that their grant money was in his hands.

And him not even a doctor of English, much less neuroscience. Great. Eric hoped Schoenfeld was used to presenting to laymen.

Shoenfeld led the way up to the control center, overlooking the single huge arm. Pentecost stared into the dim hangar, squinting to try and make out details. "An arm? Where's the rest of it?"

"You've seen my cost estimates," Shoenfeld said flatly.

"And you've worked out the control interface?"

Shoenfeld glanced back at Lightcap and Foreman. "We might have something."

"It's called the Pons," Lightcap said, stepping forward. "That's Latin for bridge."

Foreman had stopped at the Pons station to look over the uplink gear--what they had of it. Fuck, maybe if they'd had another month, they'd have something to show for it. Or maybe not. Maybe this idea was as stupid and crazy as it sounded and the PPDC's funding was better shoveled at another project. It just hurt to get his hopes up about this crazy idea.

"... may as well hook me in and see if your theory works," Pentecost said.

Foreman froze, hands on the EEG leads. Shoenfeld took the words right out of his thoughts and asked, "You're serious?"

"Of course."

Lightcap looked back at Eric, down to her baby the Pons, then back up at Pentecost. "I don't recommend that, sir," was her mild comment.

"Why not? Will it kill me?" Pentecost asked with an edge that might have been humor.

There was a long pause.

"Probably not," Shoenfeld said.

"So far," Eric cut in, "We've calibrated this end of the link and run simulations for the input, but we haven't been able to get our test subjects to react to the added movement as though it's natural." He paused. "By test subjects I mean us."

Pentecost nodded. "But you haven't actually hooked anyone up to that?"

"Right."

"So the full connection might work better." He tilted his head minutely. "Or kill me. Is that it?"

"That's..." Eric nodded. "That's basically it, yes."

"Well, we only live once. Hook me up."

It took about fifteen minutes to get Pentecost into the array of sensors. Eric ran a quick calibration while Lightcap talked him through the sequence.

"Feels like my arm is in wet concrete," Pentecost relayed.

Lightcap nodded. "That's resistance from the datastream. We didn't have time to calibrate it to your profile. Just try to wiggle your fingers."

Eric wanted to pace, but he was frozen in place by the monitor, staring at the feedback data with his finger on the kill switch. He was pretty sure that while not having any results was bad, sending the PPDC's guy home in a body bag would be worse.

The numbers didn't look good. It didn't look like simple arm motion, which is what they were hoping for. It looked like strain and stress and pain, and Eric was gritting his teeth and weighing cutting the whole thing off when a grinding, clanking noise came from the hangar.

"It's working!" Shoenfeld crowed, and Eric stared in wonder as the gigantic fingers of the robot hand clenched and unfurled.

When they got Pentecost back in the lab, the man was shaking and sweating with the effort. "But it works," he said, exhilarated. "I'll take that report back and you'll get your funding, Doctor."

"You're getting an exam first," Foreman said, "To make sure that stunt didn't fry anything. This way."

Pentecost gave him an almost incredulous look, then shook his head and followed.

The neurology lab wasn't entirely his space, since he was sharing it with Lightcap, but it felt more like his territory than the hangar did. He got Pentecost settled in the exam chair and slipped the EEG onto his head.

"So you do this often?" Pentecost asked as Foreman dialed up the diagnostics.

"Hm? Oh, occasionally," he answered. "Lightcap's trying to work out a screening program for eventual candidates." Pentecost's adrenaline was still running high, but his mind seemed to have mostly recovered from the strain of moving the metal arm. "How do you feel?"

"Fine except for the headache," Pentecost said. "Can you do anything about that?"

"I can give you some Tylenol when we're through," Foreman said. "First I need you to count backwards from ten and do some math problems."

Pentecost raised his eyebrows again, then leaned back and followed his instructions.

The Pons hardware was incredibly sensitive. It let him have a real-time map of activity in Pentecost's brain to the molecular resolution. He watched as Pentecost went through the functional tests and nodded in satisfaction. Everything looked normal, even up to the little dopamine spikes whenever Pentecost looked--

At him. Well. He was going to keep that information to himself. Close to his chest, as it were.

"Well, you check out," he said.

"Good," Stacker said, and slipped the headset off. He gave Eric a measuring glance. "If this takes off, are you and Dr. Lightcap going to be able to diagnose any problems with your pilots?"

"We hope so," was all he could say. "But we won't know until something goes wrong."

"Fair enough." Stacker picked up his jacket, then hesitated. "You know of any place to get a good cup of coffee in this city?"

Eric raised his eyebrows. "Coffee?"

Stacker licked his lips. "Not coffee." He paused. "My plane leaves at seven."

"Well," Eric said, "I know a place."

* * *

"Headache better?" he asked when they were both getting their breath back and sweating into his sheets.

Stacker snorted. "Head's fine. Arse is a bit sore."

"Hey, I offered, you insisted--"

"I remember." He stretched his arms out, a process that Eric took a few seconds to properly admire. "Damn. I have to get on that plane or your project won't get its money."

Eric laughed. "Well, it's... it's not really my project. Shoenfeld and Lightcap did all the designs. I just look in people's heads."

"It's what's in people's heads that's going to win this," Stacker said.

"I hope you're right." Eric pushed himself up until he was sitting and started looking for his underwear. "You need a ride to the airport?"

"I'll take you up on that." Stacker was giving him an appraising look. "You don't believe in this thing working, do you?"

Eric took a deep breath. "I... think we have further to go than it looks. And it looks like we've got a long way to go. I'm sure we need something against those things besides dropping nukes on them, but... I'm not sure this is it."

"Heh." Stacker reached for his own pants and teased out his socks. "Well, keep up that optimism, doctor, we're going to need it."

* * *

The next time he saw Stacker Pentecost, the wall at Sydney harbor had been breached.

He'd gotten the message a few weeks earlier. In the intervening years, he'd watched the rise of the Jager Program, the final breakthrough of the shared Drift and the implementation of the safeguards he and Lightcap had designed. He'd watched when the program had been abandoned and the walls started going up. He'd figured that if the program was dead and nobody needed him to tinker with the brain side of the Pons, then he could go back to neurosurgery and leave the Jagers alone.

And then the message asking him to come to Hong Kong.

He told himself he didn't catch the plane because Stacker Pentecost asked him to, and he mostly believed it; he was going because the walls were bullshit and they'd run out of other options and he didn't want to just sit around doing nothing. But he did suffer a twinge when he landed at the Shatterdome and Pentecost was off on another continent looking for pilots.

So he wound up following Tendo Choi around to the Dome's infirmary. "The Marshall wants all the pilots to have a full neurological workup," Choi said.

"You haven't been doing that already?" Foreman asked, taking a look at the setup. It was decent, though the place looked like it could use a thorough sterilizing before he sat anyone in the chair. The sea air had gotten into everything.

"Oh sure, we've been doing checkups, routine stuff, but we want to make sure everyone's in top condition."

Foreman raised an eyebrow. "What'll happen if someone isn't?"

"Well, then, we have a problem." Choi shook his head. "I'm going to get topside and check on things in operations. Your assistant's going to be Zheng Bibi, she should be here in a minute. Okay?"

Foreman kept himself from rolling his eyes by a supreme effort. "As okay as I'll ever get, I guess."

He was wrong about the sterilization, it turned out; the surgery next door was sealed off from the saltwater corrosion that seemed to have affected every other room in the Shatterdome, and the exam room had a full suite of UV equipment to clean off the work surfaces, and plenty of sterile paper to cover them with. He was setting up when an older Chinese woman stepped inside and stopped, wide-eyed. "You're Doctor Foreman?"

"Yes?"

"Let me do that for you," she said, stepping forward. "I'm Zheng Bibi, your assistant."

"Thanks." She showed a much better grasp of knowing where everything was, so he let her take over. "Do you know anything about the pilots I'm supposed to be working up?"

"We have two teams here now, and Striker Europa will be coming shortly," she said, laying out packets of individually wrapped scalpels and forceps. "There are Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon." She hesitated with her hands on the sterilizer. "I am sorry... I have their poster above my bed."

"Oh yeah?" He wanted to put her at ease. He tried to smile but she wasn't looking at him. "Can you tell me something about the pilots?"

"They're the only three-person team to pilot a Jaegar," she said, smiling to herself. "It's because they are triplets. They had a special design for their Jaegar, because they are three people, instead of two, right?"

"Sounds interesting."

"Triplets!" She shook her head. "They play basketball by the cafeteria. I try not to stare like a dirty old mama."

Eric chuckled. "Well, we need to start somewhere. Can you round them up and bring them in for a checkup?"

Bibi put her hands to her mouth and giggled. "Oh, I can manage!"

While she went to find the pilots, Eric familiarized himself with the Drift.

The Pons and the Drift it initiated was certainly used to link pilots and the Jaegars. But it had also come into use in neurosurgery, to look into patients' heads and connect them with testing equipment. Eric had his own Pons setup at his practice, now; he was familiar with the routine of slipping the modified headset on and booting up the diagnostic.

The warm familiar feeling of Drifting came over him. He'd never attempted to pilot a robot, but he was confident in taking his diagnostic software out for a spin.

His own brain looked fine. He backed up and checked the links to the patient's end. All green. Now he just needed a patient.

As if on cue, the door opened up and Bibi led in three young Chinese men in matching red basketball jerseys. They drew themselves up short when they saw the equipment, and the guy in front gestured at the Pons link and said something disgruntled in Cantonese.

"Sorry," Eric said, "I'm a little rusty. Do you guys know English?"

"Of course," the front guy said. "I am Hu, these are my brothers Cheung and Jin. And we do not Drift with any except each other."

"Well, I'm Dr. Foreman, and it's not going to be a full Drift, not like you're piloting." He pointed at the diagnostic computer. "That takes more than an hour to tune to an individual's neural system. Right now it's tuned to me. Using the neural link, we can get a full workup in a couple minutes."

Hu was still hesitating. Cheung leaned forward and whispered something in his ear.

Eric cleared his throat. "Marshall Pentecost asked me to give everyone a full neurological scan."

The triplets exchanged another glance, then bowed. "Of course," Cheung said, and stepped forward. "I'm the oldest, I'll go first."

Eric gestured at the chair. "Be my guest."

Cheung patted his brothers on the shoulder, sat in the chair and leaned back. Eric settled the Pons circuitry around his head and switched it on.

The Drift rose around him. It was a turmoil of disorientation at first. He saw flashes--memories, experiences, feelings. It wasn't as intense as a full connection, he knew that intellectually, but it felt like opening his brain to a fire hose.

Cheung resisted for a moment, but he was used to the Drift, and after his initial stiffness his mind relaxed like an unclenching fist. Eric guided him into the diagnostics, and after a couple seconds he has a complete workup of Cheung's brain.

One wasn't any good without the others, of course, so he disconnected and shut down the Drift. "Okay, thanks," he said. "Next?"

Hu got into the seat after his brother. He was nervous but trying not to show it. He'd calm down when the Drift hit, so Eric got him settled quickly and opened up the Pons. It was easier the second time, knowing what to expect; the flood of Drifting washed over him and he was able to click Hu into the diagnostic right away. They were done almost as soon as the link stabilized.

"All right. Not so bad, huh?"

"Yeah," Hu agreed. "Okay, bro, you're up."

Jin gave his brother a hesitant smile and sat down in his place. This time the link was almost comically easy to instigate. The scan passed in a blink.

"Okay, that's all done," Eric said as he eased out of the Drift.

"Did we pass?" Hu asked.

Eric pulled up the scans on his monitor. "All three of you look good. Let me know if you get any unexplained headaches or dizzy spells, okay?"

The three of them grinned, like three parts of the same machine. "Sure, doc," Hu said. "Hey, come shoot some hoops with us sometime."

They filed out, and Bibi turned to Eric with stars in her eyes. "See what I mean?"

* * *

The Kaidonovskys were likewise reluctant to sign up.

"We do not Drift except each other," Aleksandra "Sasha" Kaidonovsky said with an incredible icy glare, as her husband loomed over her and nodded.

He got similar reluctance when the father-son team piloting Striker Eureka made landfall and checked in. At least that time Hercules Hansen was willing to take Pentecost's orders as seriously as Eric was.

"What does the old man think he's doing?" the elder Hansen muttered under his breath. Eric tried not to echo the thought too hard as he opened the link.

And where the hell was Stacker Pentecost, anyway?

He asked Tendo Choi, who worked with him; he asked Hercules Hansen, who had been there at the beginning and the beginning-of-the-end of the P.P.D.C.; he even had a short talk with Mako Mori, who he discovered through gossip was the man's adopted daughter. None of them knew, or would say, what was going on.

When Pentecost touched down with Raleigh Beckett in tow, things finally started to make sense.

"Do you know about Raleigh Beckett?" Bibi asked when he got back from lunch.

Eric shrugged. "I heard some things, yeah. He was in Danger when she got taken down, and the Marshall just brought him in to pilot her again?"

"They're having tryouts tomorrow," Bibi said. "It's exciting!"

"Do you know anyone trying out?"

She shook her head. "My nephew was training to be a pilot, but he went home to Shangguan."

He nodded. "I guess I get to look inside Beckett's head, too?"

"I guess so," Bibi said.

She sounded dubious. Eric frowned. "You haven't heard something else?"

"It's hard to say," she said and shrugged. "He's not following standard procedure, you know?"

Eric took a deep breath, then nodded. "I'll go find him."

"You just missed him," Tendo Choi said when he got to ops a few minutes later.

Eric rolled his eyes. "Great. Well, did he tell you to send Beckett to the lab for a brain scan?"

"No such memo, but he could be waiting for him to get a partner." Choi quirked an infuriating eyebrow in his direction. "Tryouts are tomorrow at six. Want to go watch?"

"No thanks, I have ceiling tiles to study," Eric said, and let himself out.

Where the hell was Stacker Pentecost?

Eric spent the rest of the day failing to get a handle on the man. By the time he fell asleep in the sea-smelling darkness he was more annoyed than he'd been since he got off the plane.

The next day wasn't much better, except in the gossip mill.

"Does anyone talk about anything besides the pilots around here?" Eric asked Choi at breakfast.

Tendo took a bite of tofu and grinned. "No, because they are..." he glanced over at where the Australians were glaring at Beckett. "So _very_ entertaining."

"So did something happen at Beckett's tryouts?"

"Oh yeah," He grinned. "Mako Mori stepped into the ring and Raleigh demanded she be his partner."

"Oh."

"Oh yes." Tendo shook his head. "Marshall was _not_ happy."

"Where is he, anyway?"

"He's around," Tendo said vaguely. "He said he's gonna pick who Beckett's partner is for their trial run in a bit."

"But..." Eric squinted at the other man, "the Marshall hasn't sent either of them for the full neuro workup he's demanded for everyone else."

"Guess he's waiting for something," Tendo said.

"Great," Eric said. "Maybe he's waiting for someone to point out they're trying to do their job."

* * *

The near-explosion took him and everyone else in the hangar by surprise. Since he hadn't been asked to check up Beckett's head, he was startled when he got the news that they were giving Danger a test run.

 _Goddamn self-important lunatics,_ he thought as he followed the curious crowd to watch the Jaegar warm up. _Oh sure, neurological testing's real important, except when it comes to your handpicked pilot and your daughter. Save me from men with God complexes and is it supposed to be doing that?_

The swiftly rising murmors around him led Eric to the conclusion that no, the Jaegar was not supposed to be raising its arm and powering up its plasma cannon during a shakedown test.

 _Shit,_ he thought next, _I hate being right._

He could vaguely make out, from his position, the tiny figures in the control tower running around attempting to shut the Jaegar and her pilots down. Nothing seemed to be working. Eric closed his eyes and hoped that whatever happened next wouldn't bring the whole Shatterdome down around their ears.

The keening ozone whine of the plasma cannon powered down. The bay seemed almost silent in its absence.

Eric shouldered his way out of the crowd. He had someone to track down.

* * *

They wouldn't let him into Pentecost's office. The shouting that echoed in the hall seemed like it would go on for a while, and Mori and Beckett, waiting outside, didn't look like they wanted company.

So he left a message and headed back to the lab.

Bibi caught on to his mood and got out of his way. He picked up the Pons relay, slipped it on, and started punching through the calibration sequence, as though that would somehow summon Stacker Pentecost via telepathically administered guilt.

"You're probably right," Pentecost said from the doorway. "That would have been a good idea."

Eric took a moment to compose himself against using his first, most sarcastic response. "Nice of you to finally see me," he said instead, turning around and slipping the Pons off his head.

Pentecost looked... thin, he noticed first. And pale. His uniform jacket had been padded a bit; he'd lost muscle and not just fat. And there was a trace of something like blood in his right nostril.

"I hear you've been after me to send Beckett and Mori for their workup," Pentecost said evenly.

"You look like hell," Eric volleyed.

Pentecost's eyes flickered over the walls behind him. "This is hell."

"Nice. You practice your rhetoric?" Eric stepped closer. Stacker didn't move, just started tracking him again. "Yeah, I thought since we did a profile of all your other pilots, you'd want a workup done on the one you hauled off a beach after years of downtime and the one who's never piloted before. Or was there some other reason you invited me to Hong Kong?"

"It's a moot point now," Stacker said quietly. "They're standing down for the forseeable future."

Eric took another step closer. "Because you have so many spare pilots. And Jaegars."

Stacker frowned, looking discomfited for the first time, and stepped away. "How have you been keeping yourself?" he asked. "You got fat."

"And you got _sick,"_ Eric said. Stacker froze, but Eric pushed on. "It's all over your breath. What are we talking, leukemia? Lymphoma?"

Stacker took a few deep breaths. Eric took the time to run the numbers in his head. More than 200 or 300 rads in a day caused immediate radiation sickness, but just because a Jaegar was shielded enough that its pilots wouldn't start puking once they stepped outside didn't mean they weren't getting hit. Phrases like "deep dose equivalent" and "stochastic effects" and "5-year survival rate" started running through his head.

"T-cell," Stacker finally said, and Eric closed his eyes.

"Shit."

"Yeah, tough break," Stacker said. "But if this doesn't work, we won't have a future to worry about, and if it does, the war will be over and it won't matter."

Eric's mouth felt drier than it should. "It might matter to some people."

Stacker shook his head and turned for the door. "I'll let you know when Beckett and Mori are ready for their physical," he said, and the door swung shut behind him.

* * *

The triplets were playing another pickup basketball game when he walked past. Hu snatched the ball out of the air and called, "Hey doc, think fast!"

Eric looked up just in time to defend himself. He caught the ball and then gently aimed it back toward the basket. That it went in he attributed to luck more than any residual athletic ability.

Hu retrieved the ball and dribbled deliberately, grinning. "Two-on-two?"

Eric snorted. "Two on one-and-a-half, more like. Thanks but I'd prefer to keep my legs."

"We'll go easy on you," Cheung said.

Eric caught a flash of blonde hair and a familiar blue sweater out of the corner of his eye. "Sorry, guys, I have someone I need to talk to."

Beckett looked slightly more banged up than he had an hour ago outside Stacker's office. Eric didn't want to know. "Hey, Beckett?"

The pilot slowed and turned. "Who wants to know?"

Eric held up his hands. "I'm Dr. Foreman. We haven't had a chance to talk."

Beckett suddenly relaxed. "Oh, yeah, the brain doctor. We were supposed to come see you." He shook his head. "Too late now, I guess."

Well, it was nice to know someone had thought to mention him. "I'd still like to have a scan in case you get un-grounded. Why don't you come by the lab and we'll get you set up?"

"Now?"

Eric shrugged. "You got somewhere else to be?"

Beckett's face spoke volumes. "Guess not."

As they walked back toward the lab, Eric suddenly realized that the Wei triplets hadn't said a single word in English. He turned to look at them, but they were already deep into their game.

Beckett was the first pilot he'd met who didn't complain about putting on the Pons. "You know what happened, right?" he said as he lay down. "I went off-balance and pulled Mako out of alignment. It was my fault."

"You're not at fault for someone else's brain," Eric said, settling the interface on his own head.

"You are in the Drift." He hesitated. "So, y'know, if it gets rough in there... I'm sorry."

"Believe me," Eric said as the interface tuned up, "That is the least of my worries today."

He felt the Drift wash over him, intense and overwhelming, and he suddenly realized what Raleigh was talking about. The other pilots had been in combat, but Raleigh had been in a losing battle--and the intense rush of emotions was totally different. He only got a taste of it, and suddenly understood how Mako Mori, who had never Drifted before, had been knocked off guard.

But after a second the rush steadied out to a gentle ebb and flow, and Eric could focus on running the neural scan with the comfortable balance he'd come to expect from Jaegar pilots. After the initial shock, all indicators came up green.

Except, of course, that Raleigh Beckett was only one half of the equation. Eric shut down the link and slid his half of the interface off his head.

Raleigh was sitting up in the chair. "I'm learning all kinds of stuff about Marshall Pentecost today," he said offhandedly. Eric frowned, and Raleigh smirked as though he'd figured out something. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

"Oh, talk all you want," he said, suddenly tired of the endless rounds of testosterone-fueled bullshit. "What, we had a one-night stand over ten years ago? He asked me to show up and I came? Sure, big news."

"That you're worried about him," Raleigh said.

Eric froze, suddenly wondering what the hell Raleigh _had_ seen in the Drift, if he'd caught all those details that Eric had tucked away, the offhand way that Stacker had said "T-cell" like it was nothing. His mind was still racing when Raleigh continued, "Don't worry, like he told me, all he's got to be is a fixed point."

The pilot stood up and stretched, and Eric took a breath. "Yup, and as long as this plan works, we won't have to worry. If you see Ms. Mori, can you send her over?"

"Sure thing. Maybe you can convince the Marshall she's ready." Raleigh shook his head, "Maybe he'll listen to you."

"Maybe," Eric said. Beckett showed himself out.

* * *

Bibi looked at him reproachfully after lunch. "I hear you played basketball with the Wei triplets."

"Not very much," Foreman admitted.

"Ha!" She shook her head and grinned. "Still, any. Mmm-mm."

He chuckled. "I would have let you know if anything exciting happened, I promise."

Bibi looked like she was going to say something tart in response, when there was a footstep at the door. Eric looked up to see Mako Mori standing there, arms folded politely in front of her.

"Ms. Mori," Eric greeted her. Bibi stepped aside and started sorting packets of surgical equipment.

Mori bowed, and said softly, "Raliegh... Mr. Beckett said you wanted to see me?"

"Yeah," Eric said. "Since you two are a team, I wanted to get a neural snapshot of the both of you. I got his earlier, do you mind if we take yours?"

If anything, her manner got even more formal. "I am sorry for the miscommunication, doctor," she said. "Mr. Beckett and I are no longer a piloting team. I have been grounded."

Eric let that hang in the air a moment before he said, "I don't think that Beckett accepts that."

"He will have to," she said. "We have our orders."

"Well, just in case your skills are needed sooner rather than later, would you mind if I got the reading?"

She studied his face for a few seconds. "Can your machine tell me... why I fell out of synch in the Drift?"

Eric hesitated. "The... the things that cause people to de-synch, the emotions, the memories... they don't always leave physical marks. I might-- _might",_ he emphasized, "be able to tell you if it'll happen again. I can't tell you why."

Mako nodded, then lay down in the chair. "All right. Let's do this, then."

The Drift was just as strong as it had been with Raleigh. Eric linked her into the diagnostic and felt the hum of the connection down to his fingertips.

The mesh of her mind and Raleigh's was encouraging. "Okay," he said as she sat up. "You guys look good."

"Any sign of what happened to us?"

He shook his head. "Physically? You guys look great." He turned to her and shrugged. "Sometimes a really strong connection can have... you can have emotional echoes, where you bounce off each other. If one of you gets out of synch, it can push the other out."

She nodded. "That is what happened... during the test."

"Right. Well, listen to your partner. Now that you know it can happen and what it feels like, you might be able to predict it."

Mako thought that over, then bowed. "Thank you, Doctor Foreman."

"Miss Mori," he said. "I hope you get back in that Jaegar."

She smiled a bit and left.

"So," Bibi said when she'd gone. "That's how you become friends with Jaegar pilots. Does it work on all of them?"

"Not the Australians," Eric admitted. "I have bad luck with Australians. Though in that case, I think it's probably me."

* * *

The next Kaiju attack happened in the middle of the night. Eric scrambled blearily awake, to wait with the rest of the civilians in the Shatterdome's bunker, waiting and watching for news as it trickled down from command.

When the lights went out, Eric's breath lodged in his throat. 'The hell... did they hit the transformers?'

"How'd they get the generators?" someone said, and that clicked.

"EMP," he said out loud. "Shit, was that us or them?"

Bibi gave him a look. "What do you mean?"

"Electro-magnetic pulse, you know, kills computer chips. It's one side effect of a nuke."

She clutched at his arm. "They wouldn't... we would have heard something. The Jaegars were built so we wouldn't _need_ nukes."

He shook his head. The only alternative was that the Kaiju had somehow learned how to make energy pulses strong enough to blow their power, and that wasn't any more comforting.

The lights flickered and came back on. Some of their backups were functioning, then. Eric tried to remember how EMPs actually worked, but all his brain could come up with was images of flash-burns from radiation exposure, erythmia and ulceration, aplastic anemia and cell mutation, lymphoma and leukemia...

He closed his eyes for a moment. He only opened them when someone said, "Cherno Alpha is down."

* * *

All hands on deck to fix broken equipment and broken limbs. The fight had taken less than an hour, the cleanup felt like it took a lifetime.

They dragged the Wei brothers out of the water an hour and a half after Crimson Typhoon sank into the harbor. Tough kids, all of them, but several shades paler from the shock of nearly drowning while being linked together. Eric prescribed rest, and maybe some therapy.

The Kaidonovskys hadn't made it.

It was like a tender part inside his head had burned and fused, that knowledge; a part of him that had reached out and touched someone else now cut off completely. It was far too raw a wound, far too intimate a loss for such a short connection.

Stacker had lost his partner to cancer. Raleigh had lost his brother while Drifting with him. Eric rubbed his eyes and collapsed into his chair in front of his diagnostic equipment. 

"It's almost beyond belief, isn't it?" Stacker asked from the doorway.

"You gotta stop trying to sneak up on people," Eric said, not looking up. "It's unnerving."

"I need your services, doctor."

Now he looked up and raised his eyebrows. "Can you make that sound less like you want a blowjob? I mean," he backtracked, "Unless that's what you mean. I'm too tired for innuendo right now."

Stacker's smirk was infinitesimal, but it was there. "I need you to scan me."

It was Eric's turn to stare.

Stacker sighed. "We lost two Jaegars out there," he said. "We might be able to raise Crimson Typhoon, in time, but we don't have time. And Herc Hansen broke his arm."

Eric licked his lips and said, very carefully, "You're going to pilot a Jaegar. With Chuck Hansen."

"You disapprove?"

"He reminds me of this other arrogant Australian with daddy issues I used to know," Eric said, deliberately light. "Though Chase was less violent. Are you sure?"

"There's no one else."

"What about all those candidates you had Beckett--"

"There's. No one. Else." Stacker took a step forward on each beat, until he was looming over Eric's chair, breathing heavily. "Not for this mission."

"This mission." He couldn't swallow the coppery taste in the back of his mouth. "What mission?"

Stacker shook his head. "The one I need to be ready for." He pointed at the chair. "Is this it?"

Eric nodded mutely. Stacker sat down and lay back into the embrace of the machine. Eric turned to the computer and slipped the matching headset over his own head.

"When you're ready, doctor," Stacker said, and Eric initiated the link.

Oh. That mission.

"Seriously?" he said when he took the headset off. "The last time I saw a nuke actually solve a problem like this was when I was watching Babylon 5. Which is science fiction, if you hadn't heard."

"We're fighting giant monsters with twenty-five story tall robots," Stacker pointed out. "I think we've left science fiction behind."

Eric took a deep breath. "You're still going to--"

"Am I fit to pilot?" Stacker shot him a glare. "Anything material keeping me from Drifting with Hansen?"

He sighed and looked at the diagnostic, but he already knew the answer. "You're fine. You're a natural."

Stacker nodded and pushed himself out of the chair. "Good."

"Wait," Eric said as Stacker started for the door. He dropped his own headset and stood, making a grab for Stacker's arm. "Wait a second. Don't--"

Don't get yourself killed. Don't leave without saying something. Don't die on me. Don't vanish again. Don't let this be the last time we see each other.

"I've lost track of a lot of people," he said instead. "Didn't call, didn't write, didn't have their email address... I've been sorry about a few, in hindsight. And maybe I didn't expect one of them to be you. But I flew halfway around the world because you made one call, so I guess that means something."

Stacker looked down at Eric's hand on his elbow, let his eyes rest there for a moment. "I guess it does," he said. He looked up and met Eric's eyes. "Coffee?"

"Not coffee," Eric said firmly.

* * *

Eric's bunk was closer. Stacker's jacket and his lab coat wound up on the floor; later he had to hunt for nearly half an hour for his left shoe.

Stacker pushed him firmly down on the bed. "I don't want to be treated like a fucking china plate."

"Right," Eric said. "I remember."

His hands left purple marks behind remarkably quickly on Stacker's skin. Afterward he had to force his fingers away from tracing them, cataloguing the damage done before the fight.

"Thanks," Stacker said.

Eric smirked into his pillow. "You're welcome."

Stacker touched him on the shoulder. "Thanks for coming halfway around the world because I made the call."

He might have said something else, but the base warning klaxons sounded.

For a second, Stacker closed his eyes and looked weary. Then he pushed himself out of bed and started collecting his clothes with military efficiency.

"Hey," Eric said as he sat up. "Watch your back out there, okay?"

Stacker clapped him on the shoulder, but didn't say anything. Eric let him leave, then bent and tried to find the rest of his clothes.

* * *

Two days later, Eric Foreman left the Jaegar Program for good.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Strings That Control the System (the Radically Theoretical remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4227201) by [misura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura)




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